Barry Saunders always knew his son, Weslye, could write. Even when he was young, the Indianapolis Colts backup tight end could write evocative short stories, ones that were so good, Barry didn’t even have to edit.

And Barry is a news columnist for the Raleigh News & Observer and has been a journalist for 27 years.

“Teachers would read his stuff and ask if I helped write it for him,” Barry Saunders said Wednesday. “I’d look at it before he handed it in, but I barely touched it. He was always good with words. He was a natural writer.”

Said Weslye: “I remember writing a short story about a kid who escaped from slavery, went out on his own, the fact that he was educated and was able to maneuver through the South at the age of 18. We had a professional writer (Allan Gurganus) who came to our high school and he read a couple of the stories we wrote, including mine. He got in contact with me afterwards and told me, ‘Hey, kid, you should keep writing.’ That solidified for me that I was a pretty good writer.”

A lot of National Football League players want to make the jump from the game to the broadcast booth after their playing days are done. Saunders is different, always has been. He someday wants to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a news columnist for a newspaper (assuming, prayerfully, there are still newspapers in the future).

“I distinctly remember my dad writing about this kid at the North Carolina School of Science and Math, he was 6-9, 300-plus pounds, but he wasn’t an athlete, more of a brainiac,” Weslye recalled. “He wore a size 22 shoe. My dad wrote about this kid, he couldn’t afford to buy size 22 shoes. So hundreds of people sent in money to buy him new shoes.

“I remembered thinking how you could make such a difference in people’s lives.”

A lot of pro athletes, maybe even most, look at journalists and see folks who are frustrated jocks (true), poorly dressed (mostly true), underpaid (very true) and out to get them and trick them into saying something untoward (not true, generally speaking).

Saunders sees it from the other side. Yes, we’re still a frustrated, slovenly, underpaid bunch, but we’re not generally in the business of trashing people — unless they firmly deserve it. Ninety five percent of the time, we’re celebrating their accomplishments, telling their stories.

“It’s a noble profession,” Saunders said. “I’ve seen that from watching my father.”

Ultimately, Saunders wants to come at journalism from the point of view of someone who’s been in the media crosshairs, who’s been written about and occasionally criticized for his mistakes, including two suspension for performance-enhancing drug use. If he was writing about sports, he said, he would come at it from a former player’s perspective, with a heightened sensitivity toward the plight of the NFL player.

“A lot of times journalists will attack the person and not address the issues he’s dealing with, who he really is as a person,” Saunders said. “I would be more sensitive toward players because (the media) doesn’t really know who they are and where they’re from, what they’ve been exposed to. Football is what they do, not who they are.”

Saunders didn’t only write short stories as a kid, but wrote some news stories for his high school and college paper. He also became a big reader, mostly by accident.

“When I’d misbehave, my dad was pretty strict, and he’d take the TV away, so I read,” he said. “I didn’t like it at first, but then I started to enjoy reading.”

Saunders was originally drawn to journalism because he saw his dad hanging around the house and doing a job that didn’t require any heavy lifting.

“(Weslye) thought it was easy,” Barry said with a laugh. “You and I both know that’s not the case.”

Yeah, he did. “He was always at home, and it seemed like it came so natural and easy for my dad,” he said. “I thought, ‘I’d like to do that.’ He would always use these words, I’d ask what they meant, he’d tell me to go look them up. Then I’d find out what they meant and try to use them in our conversations or one of my stories.”

Here’s the truth about column-writing. If you do it right, it does look easy. But as Red Smith once said, there are days when writing is akin to opening a vein and letting it bleed. Columnists, and journalists, are on a perpetual hamster wheel, running and running and thinking about that next story and that next deadline — constantly. At least the football season ends.

“I used to go out on stories with my dad all the time,’’ Weslye said. “We’d go out and talk to pastors at a church. One day, we talked to homeless people. Another day, we spent the entire day riding the city buses just to see what it was like. It was different every day, hearing people’s stories. It was interesting.”

It’s the greatest job in the world, even if we are frustrated jocks who dress poorly and are underpaid.

And one more thing: Saunders can’t have my job. Not for another 15 years, at least.

Bob Kravitz is a columnist for The Indianapolis Star. Email bob.kravitz@indystar.com or follow him on Twitter: @bkravitz.